


Life Gets Narrower the Further You Go

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post s2 finale, peggysous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 21:13:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6167017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post- S2 finale PeggySous. No real plot, just feelings and fluff.</p><p>“Part of her will always long to spin with Steve across a ballroom draped in red, white and blue, but now, there’s something very appealing about swaying softly in the silence of a sunny apartment.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Gets Narrower the Further You Go

_post- S2 finale PeggySous. My first non-Flarrow fic, so please be gentle. No real plot, just feelings and fluff.  
_

_Title from “[Flight of the Crow](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DPjGPzlZDLlY&t=Yjk4MDgxOWQ3Yjg4YmMzMjdhMTRmNWEzNDIzNWI2MTE4Mjg5N2ZiMSxJT0YzZENnWg%3D%3D)” by Passenger._

**Life Gets Narrower the Further You Go**

It’s brunch with Jason, of course, that gets her thinking about dancing again, but it’s not until she’s standing in front of Daniel in the SSR office that Peggy realizes how the dream in her mind’s eye has changed.

In the years since the war, she’s sort of settled with the idea that maybe there was only one man she’d ever truly want to dance with. And he’s gone, downed with a plane and a promise for a slow song she knew even then he wouldn’t be able to keep.

When the kind and brilliant scientist pulls her onto the dance floor that first night in Los Angeles, it feels…not so much like a betrayal, but certainly…off. It’s nice, but that’s all it is, somehow. When she kisses him later, a perfect distraction, it’s more of the same. It only confirms her theory. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to dance with anyone else. Maybe that’s okay.

But then, there’s Daniel, right there in front of her, through the first door on her right.

If she’s honest with herself, the thought of him – of _them_ – has been in the back of her mind since the moment Rose nudged her into the secret entry to the new L.A. office. If she’s even more honest, it’s been there since he asked her to drinks in New York last year. She remembers watching him bolster himself, almost physically, for the seemingly innocuous request, remembers how muscles in her cheeks that she thought had atrophied years ago started to ache from the smile he left on her face.

But she turned him down.

Daniel left town, and Peggy stopped dreaming about dancing, and that those two things happened at the same time is nothing more than coincidence.

She hasn’t really let herself think of him in the months since he’s gone, doesn’t even consider that the butterflies in her stomach on the cross-country flight are anything but air sickness. When Rose drops her heavy-handed hint, she tells herself that the officer manager simply has too much time on her hands. When the first sight of _Chief_ Sousa warms her, almost physically, she figures it’s because he’s a friendly face in a strange city. The signs get harder to ignore, but her lies don’t get any more convincing.

There’s the painful twisting in her chest when he tells her about Violet, when she sees the diamond ring he has ready for the other woman. It’s something as simple as envy, probably, jealousy not for the man himself, but for a happiness she might never see in this lifetime. Besides, what she has with Daniel is perfectly fine. He respects her without deference, trusts her like a equal, and that longing look in his eyes, well, it’s something different. It has to be.

Then touches start to linger, words carry more meaning than they should, even a simple glance feels heavy with the weight of something they aren’t saying out loud.

She looks into Daniel’s eyes as a searing pain surges through her abdomen, sends shockwaves through her body, and wonders if she’ll die with the scent of her own blood hanging in the air and his voice, pained with horror, ringing in her ears. When she doesn’t, his palm rests hot and heavy on her arm and his eyes show her the fractured worry he’s only just trying to hide. He makes her feel so much that all she can muster is something close to a joke, knowing she owes her life to the only woman who’s supposed to feel like this about him. “Yes, Chief.”

He tells her eventually of Violet’s suspicions, and though it’s hard to focus when her blood is seeping through her stitches, she’s paying close attention by the time he all but confirms them. She stained both his fiancee’s couch and his relationship with her perilous, selfish lifestyle, it seems, and her first instinct is to apologize. And then suddenly, she’s not. Because he’s lifted the veil on that look in his eyes and for the first time, she sees it for what it is. The truth lands as heavily as the henchman’s lifeless body on the roof of the surveillance van.

Later, in the lab, Daniel grabs her hand and says “Don’t go,” and it feels like he’s talking about more than an unpleasant repartee with Jack Thompson.  At the studio, he says they need to talk, and she knows they never will. When the unstable rift threatens them all, he sacrifices himself without a thought, and in her mind’s eye, Peggy sees him getting sucked into the zero matter and out of her life before he’s even actually gone.

Heroes, she should have realized by now, are the hardest kind of people to love.

She probably realized it for certain the first time they had this confrontation, when Daniel was warning her about Jason’s desperation, using her own argument against her to prove she didn’t have it in her to been any more reckless with his life than he was with hers.

 _Reckless_. That’s the word he uses in his office when she’s straightening up to say her goodbyes, mustering the courage to meet his eyes and give him some weakened platitude about how nice it was to work together once more.

He knows her, well enough not to tell her what it really is. He comes at it like it’s a professional issue, like he’s seriously admonishing her for slipping up in the field, and she’s tangled up in indignation before she even notices the glint in his eye. He’s teasing her, turning her own words against her once more, only this time, they spell out something different.

What he’s really telling her is that she loves him.

And she _does_ , doesn’t she? It happened so quickly she didn’t even have time to ward it off. With other men, it’s been easy to keep her walls up. It’s a matter of their own protection, keeping them at arm’s length out of the blast radius, safely away from the destruction she can cause. But Daniel doesn’t run from things like that, she knows that by now. He runs towards them, towards _her_. He’s the exception to every carefully cultivated rule of engagement she’s written for herself, and the realization leaves her speechless.

“Nothing to say?” he teases, and she _loves_ him. “No quick comeback?”

He tastes like hope and slightly stale coffee, his hands clutch at her waist with  the same desperation she’s pressing to his lips, and a feeling zings though her that, five years ago, she had blamed mostly on adrenaline. But now, Peggy recognizes it for what it is.

Part of her will always long to spin with Steve across a ballroom draped in red, white and blue, but now, there’s something very appealing about swaying softly in the silence of a sunny apartment. In her past, there’s a crystal clear blue gaze that reminds her of what might have been. But, in the pair of soulful brown eyes in front of her, she finally sees a future.


End file.
